How Much Does Successful Cyber Security Really Cost?

Costs are rising across most companies today. It’s not a secret that it’s getting more expensive to do business thanks to global inflation as well as rising interest rates. A new study, however, is finding that the costs of protecting against cyber events are also soaring.

The study, commissioned by digital threat prevention company Perception Point, concluded that organizations are paying an average of $1,197 per employee each year to address successful cyber incidents across email services, cloud collaboration apps or services, and web browsers. Do the math: A 500-employee company, then, spends $600,000 annually on cyber threats alone. This figure excludes compliance fines, ransomware mitigation costs, and business losses from non-operational processes, all of which can cause costs to be significantly higher. Cyber security incidents can lead to costly and time-consuming incident response processes that put a strain on an organization’s resources.

The costs aren’t only in hard dollars, but in time as well. A successful email-based cyber incident takes security staff an average of 86 hours to address. Incidents that have been detected on cloud collaboration apps or services take on average 71 hours to resolve.

Given that, enterprises should be consolidating their security stacks for more holistic and efficient threat protection, as well as leveraging managed services to support their security teams with scalable and flexible incident response capabilities. Everyone know cyber threats have been and will continue to increase – as will their impact on businesses and industries.

According to Yoram Salinger, CEO of Perception Point, given the cost, there is an imperative to “find the most accurate and efficient cybersecurity solutions which provide the necessary protection with streamlined processes and managed services, in particular with enterprises increasingly prioritizing value for money in today’s challenging economic environment.

This article first appeared in MSP Today on November 28, 2022, written by Tracey E. Schelmetic.